Pubdate: Sun, 01 Jun 2003 Source: State, The (SC) Copyright: 2003 The State Contact: http://www.thestate.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/426 Author: Joe Guy Collier, Staff Writer SAD ENDING FOR JOYFUL ALTERNATIVE Five Points Shop Has Reunion As It Closes After 30-Plus Years at Heart of Counterculture Barbara Howell stood in the back corner as she watched her store, the Joyful Alternative, fill up with customers Saturday afternoon. The Five Points shop has been part of Columbia's counterculture since 1970, but later this month, Howell, one of eight co-founders of the store, will close the Joyful Alternative because of slowing business. The store held a reunion Saturday with acoustic music and poetry readings. "This is like a chapter of their lives leaving," said Howell, 57. "People just figured we'd always be here." The store has hippie-inspired products, such as greeting cards with sayings from author Jack Kerouac. It also has New Age items, such as wishing pyramids and Buddha dolls. The store has also sold handmade clothing, such as tie-dyed shirts and crocheted bikinis. The Joyful Alternative was started by eight friends in the heyday of the hippie movement. The founders said their goal was to create a store that provided books, music, clothing and crafts that weren't being sold in mainstream stores. The store carried some drug-related products, such as rolling paper and roach clips, but the founders cringed at being called a "head shop" for marijuana smokers. Joyful Alternative co-founder Dale Alan Bailes said he encountered beatniks while living in San Francisco in the 1960s. A University of South Carolina graduate, Bailes said he wanted to bring the culture to Columbia. "I think what happened with our store and happened in the '60s was part of a wave of change," said Bailes, 62, who now lives in California. "We were just riding that wave." Tommy Love, a former night watchman for the Joyful Alternative, said the store provided a place that welcomed everyone. People frequently stopped by just to talk or play music, he said. Love, 57, now works as a records manager for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, but was in Columbia to play guitar at Saturday's reunion. The store's closing "is really too bad," Love said. "But there will always be this community here -- if not at the Joyful Alternative, somewhere else." Leilani Guskjolen, 22 and a current employee, said she was probably going to cry when the store closed. Its message of a more peaceful and less materialistic society is needed today, Guskjolen said. People keep buying bigger cars and houses that waste resources, she said. Guskjolen, originally from Minnesota, ended up in Columbia because her station wagon "pooped out" while she was visiting a nearby renaissance festival. The store's culture is "more relevant than it was back then because people are getting further away from it," she said. The founders, though, seemed unfazed by the store's closing. Donald T. and Pam McMahon, both 57, helped start the Joyful Alternative shortly after Donald returned from Vietnam. Even when the store closes, the Joyful Alternative's spirit will live on, they said. "We don't get into things like 'good' or 'bad,'" Pam McMahon said. "It's time." Howell, the only founder still with the store, said the slumping economy and competitive retail market was forcing her to close. The crowded shop on Saturday was a rare sight, she said. Howell plans to take computer classes and relaunch the Joyful Alternative through a Web site. After 33 years, though, she said it will take time to get used to not running the shop. "I'll probably have to come down here every once in a while and sweep the sidewalk or pick up a broken beer bottle in front of someone else's store," Howell said. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake